


my peace has always depended on the ashes in my wake

by imbrokelyn99



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Character Study, David likes nice smelling things, One Shot, POV Third Person Limited, Patrick doesn't really show up in this story David just thinks about him a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 19:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18762691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imbrokelyn99/pseuds/imbrokelyn99
Summary: David thinks about the memories that are called up when he smells certain things.





	my peace has always depended on the ashes in my wake

David loved his sharp sense of smell. It was one of the few things he liked about himself, one of the secret things he wouldn’t tell anybody. He liked it as much as he liked how his hair looked after it had been styled, airy, voluminous. He liked it as much as he liked the dimples that split his cheeks. But like his dimples, which he half-heartedly stifled with swallowed smiles because he’d secretly wanted someone else to notice them before he could tuck them away in the chest of things he hid in the corners of his soul, his keen olfactory senses remained an intimate thing he kept to himself.

He marvelled sometimes at how rich life was when every breath was tied to a memory. His first cup of coffee every morning: his first cup of coffee ever, and every subsequent cup thereafter, each a comfort, each a reminder of something homey. Alexis’s shampoo that wafted over from under the bathroom door when she showered in the morning: nights pressed in next to each other, cramped on his twin bed at the motel, when they’d mull over the sharp things of life in Schitt’s Creek together, like boys, and their parents, and that new and uncomfortable feeling of barely keeping your head above water when you couldn’t afford the liferaft-luxuries that money could buy. The smell of Patrick’s collar after a long day at the store: summers in Italy, where the starched and pressed cotton that dressed David’s body wilted in the heat of the sun by noon and were washed and dried on a line outside, where they were weighed down by petrichor and smelled like they’d been charged with something electric, something warm, when they’d been returned to him.

Well, perhaps that last one was a bit abstract—but in his defense, Patrick made him do and think things that he’d never had to do or think before. It was exhausting and exhilarating and wonderful to try to keep up, and he could never quite articulate how much it meant to him to be able to do that, to exercise his mind and think himself smart and capable. So David just held Patrick tightly and inhaled the smell of his blue button-downs.

And when David walked into his store every morning, senses embraced by the burning of a lavender sage candle and the subtle freshness of the wool and oils and tinctures he sold, he was reminded not of the beautiful glass-bottle stores he frequented when he had money, not of cosmopolitan boutiques across the world that all looked the same after a while. He was reminded of his own reincarnation, of his ability to make something out of nothing. He was reminded of every failure, but not in a way that felt heavy or too hard, but in a way that felt a lot like learning, in a way that felt a lot like finally charting a path to success. It reminded him that, after every bout of shame, every painful lesson, every fall from grace, David rose.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the loves of my life in the SC discord, whose support and whose endless positivity inspire me literally every day (even though it's only been a few days since we started talking...lol)
> 
> This is my first AO3 post ever! Which is crazy bc I've been in fandom for a long-ass time lol but expect more fic to come.
> 
> -Kat


End file.
